Inger Christiansen
One of Denmark’s most famous modern poets died last Saturday (2. January 2009) at the age of 73. Inger Christensen was also a novelist and essayist but was most famous for her poetry work which included notables collections such as ‘det’ (1969) and ‘alfabet’ (1981).
She has been considered by many of her peers as the foremost Danish poetic experimentalist of her generation. Much of Christensen’s work was organized upon “systemic” structures in accordance with her belief that poetry is not truth and not even the “dream” of truth, but “is a game, maybe a tragic game—the game we play with a world that plays its own game with us.”
Christiansen was born in the town of Vejle in eastern Denmark and went on to become a teacher. In 1959 she married the noted Danish poet and critic Poul Borum but they were to divorce in 1976. Upon leaving the teaching world in 1964 she devoted all her time to her writing.
During her lifetime she won numerous awards and honours including the Austrian State Prize for European Literature in 1994, the Nordic Prize in the same year, the European Poetry Prize in 1995 and The America Award in 2001. In 1978, she was appointed to the Danish Academy, and in 1994, she became a member of the Académie Européenne de Poésie.
As well as poetry, she also had two novels published, Evighedsmaskinen (1964) and Azorno (1967) and also a shorter fiction based on the Italian Renaissance painter Mantegna. Much of her work was also written especially for plays, radio pieces and children. These and her essays were collected together in her book Hemmelighedstilstanden (The State of Secrecy) in 2000.
Her works were also translated into several languages and she became known worldwide.
A picture of one of Inger Christiansen’s poems written on the side of a building in Copenhagen can be found here.
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